A few weeks ago I was browsing the internet looking for a free platform to create a personal blog. Professional blogging has its place, but I was beginning to feel hemmed in by corporate limitations. The options I came across either needed me to install blog management software on my own computer with all the headaches of setting it all up, or had various structural limitations. In the end I was about to settle for wordpress which seems to the standard, and people seem to have done really cool things with layout themes, which made me think it might be an interesting way to go.
But then I came across jotspot.com by chance, and was really taken by the ease with which I could set up, manage and run not only blogs, but also a much broader set of wiki applications. Now I've seen a number of wikis, and can fully appreciate the value of open, real time, community editable information spaces, but have always been massively put off by all the syntax involved in interacting with wikis - wikipedia included. I can't for the life of me work out why wikis have been built this way. I'm sure its fine if you're technical but otherwise makes absolutely no sense at all, unless like static commenting on blogs, its just because thats how wikipedia does it and everyone else has just followed suit. The long and short of it is that I never bothered to learn the syntax, and never really got involved with the wiki phenomenon other than as a reader.
Until now that is! Jotspot finally delivers a whole platform of personal applications based on wiki technology, that are not only beautifully simple to set up, but also fully editable through a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface, with the alternate choices of editing using direct markup or HTML if thats what floats your boat. (click here to see a screenshot of the jotspot edit interface)
The best part is that quite apart from your own personal blogs, wikis, photo albums and webpages, you can actually set up sub-sections of permission based wiki workspaces with document libraries, calendars and everything. You used to have to pay for some of it, but Google just bought them a week ago and now its all completely free, with unlimited space, and unlimited users. How cool is that?? Another big thumbs up for the folk at Google, and I bet once its all integrated into the Google platform, it'll all get a whole lot better.
Right now Google is merging jotspot onto its own systems and so have put a hold on new registrations, but you can find out more what jotspot offers at http://www.jotspot.com/gallery/. Go visit it and you'll see what I'm raving about. Watch that space and be ready to grab your free jot spot - its going to be big!